Electron number density (ne) calculated from the width of the Hα lines was also used to assess validity of the standard matrices for analysis of nails. The spectra used for the calculation were acquired in the spectral window shown in Fig. 1. The full width of the line at 656.2 nm was measured and an iterative calculation was performed using the equation ∆λ1/2=2.50×10−9α1/2ne2/3 with α1/2 interpolated from tables by Griem [15]. The resulting electron number densities for plasmas formed on the nails, filter paper, and keratin pellet were 1.0×1016, 8.6×1015, and 7.7×1015 respectively. Because the width of the Zn line at 481.0 was also greater than the spectrometer limited line width, this line could also be used to estimate electron number density using ∆λ1/2=2ωne/1016 according to Gojani [16]. In this case, using ω=0.1 gives electron densities of 1.2×1016, 1.3 ×1016, and 1.0×1016 cm−3 for the nails, filter paper, and keratin pellet respectively. In this case, it can only be concluded that the electron density of the plasmas formed on the nails, filter papers, and keratin pellets were all approximately 1016.It makes me very happy to see my paper quoted, furthermore, quoted in Talanta, a Q1 journal in analytical chemistry. But, the better surprise is that I am quoted by name in the same paragraph as Griem. I don't know what made authors write the paragraph as they did, because I did not derive the equation they refer to; in fact, this equation can be found in many other papers and books. In any case, I am happy they did what they did.
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In the paper Hydrodynamic theory of electromagnetic fields in continuous media, Mario Liu writes:
Therefore, hydrodynamic equations (such as in ferrofluids or nematics) employing Eqs. (2) without α and β would indeed lead to blatantly nonsensical results and is not usually done.I find the quote funny, because it gives some humanity to the usually dry scientific prose. But, I can't find the unusual cases when the mistake to which Liu refers to is done.
